Amortentia and Amertume
by jolirouge
Summary: Tracey Davis is in over her head: she’s a halfblood in Slytherin, she’s been giving Nott a love potion, and she overhears that Draco is helping the Death Eaters. The worst of it? Draco finds out. Can she survive to the end of the year?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters – they're all property of J.K. Rowling. Anything you don't recognize probably belongs to me, unless stated otherwise. The only thing I can take credit for is maybe the plot.

**Updated as of 1/2/08**: I've revived this story, hopefully. It's been bugging me for a while, and I recently did a page and a half of outlining, so for once I actually know very clearly where I'm taking this. Please, please, read. There's going to be a lot of exciting conflict, some romance, some depression, some joy, lots of danger, but most importantly, lots of Draco! (: I should mention that this is AU, because I take some (rather large) liberties with the timeline, but I will do my best to keep the characters all in-character, make sure they have a good reason to act as they do.

**Author's Note**: For the sake of brevity, I'll only say three things here. **One**: Stick with this story. I know some of it seems to be a bit too good to be true, but trust me, that good fortune won't last long. It will start getting really interesting the next two chapters (and after that, of course). **Two**: If you want to learn more about the characters, I'll direct you to my profile. They're actually all Rowling's creations – but I'll let you read that for yourself. **Three**: This story takes place during HBP.

Thanks for reading!

**CHAPTER ONE**

She hadn't been able to give him the potion for almost a week now, and it was starting to show.

Tracey Davis sat next to the window of the train compartment. Usually, they would have argued for the seat (although he always let her win), but today he just shrugged her off and motioned impatiently for her to sit. If she had been in any other relationship – a healthy, normal relationship – she would have asked him what was wrong. But she knew, and she knew what she had to do to fix it.

Theodore Nott was leaning forward in his seat, arguing with a seventh-year Slytherin about the finer points of something-or-other. Tracey was too busy looking for a window of opportunity to put her plan in motion to pay close attention. Millicent Bulstrode sat across the aisle from Tracey, looking just as nervous and bored as Tracey felt.

A group of underclassmen, still looking for an empty compartment, stopped in front of their door. One of them was about to open it, hoping to claim a portion of one of the wide benches, when his friend stopped him. They whispered quietly to each other and looked back inside. All conversation had stopped, and everyone in the compartment was staring back at the group of students, openly hostile. They started and walked quickly away down the hallway.

Ah, the perks of being a Slytherin.

Soon after the underclassmen scurried off, the boys started talking again, and the atmosphere of the compartment slowly returned to the previous level of anxiety.

A sharp but muffled noise from outside in the hallway prompted Tracey to sit up straight. She listened carefully; yes, there it was. The tea trolley. She could hear the woman that, year after year, made the rounds, selling the Hogwarts students such delicacies as Chocolate Frogs, Cauldron Cakes, and finger sandwiches.

She jumped up quickly. "Anyone want anything? Some pumpkin juice? Theo? I'm thirsty myself." Her heart was beating in her ears; she might have been yelling, for the looks that everyone gave her. Her mind was quickly formulating a plan for what she was about to do. When Theo didn't answer her, she said again, "Theo, want any pumpkin juice?"

He disengaged himself from his conversation slowly, to show her how much it annoyed him that she would interrupt. "What was that?"

"Pumpkin juice. Want any?"

He shrugged sharply. "Yeah, sure. I don't care."

Tracey didn't bother asking either of the others for their orders. She pulled out her purse from her bag and walked slowly down the swaying hallway. She waited patiently as the woman sold some packages of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and Drooble's Best Blowing Gum to some students Tracey didn't recognize.

The sale completed, the woman turned to Tracey. "And what would you like, dear?"

"Two pumpkin juices, please."

The woman smiled and took her money. The bottles were as cold as ice in her hands. She gripped the necks of the bottles and squeezed against the wall to let the trolley cart by.

Deliberately, she walked a few steps down the hallway and stooped over suddenly as if to tie her shoe. She made sure that no one was watching and opened both bottles. From the inside of her jacket, she produced a warm, blue-tinted glass vial, half-empty. When she uncorked it, the hallway was filled with the scent of strong spices, soap, and something she couldn't quite place, but that reminded her of Hogwarts for some reason.

Careful not to spill, she poured out half of the remaining pearlescent liquid into the bottle on the right. Then she stoppered the vial, slipped it back into its pocket, and walked back to the compartment as fast as she could without spilling the drinks.

"Took you long enough," Theodore observed as he scooted back in his seat to let her by. "The trolley's already been here and past." He treated her with the same disdain as he did with underclassmen and Mudbloods. It hurt her to see him like this.

"Sorry, I got held up. Here." She handed him the bottle in her right hand.

He took it and turned back to his conversation.

He drank it slowly during the train ride. The change came over him just as slowly, but Tracey noticed every shift in his attitude toward her.

When he was half done with his pumpkin juice, and when he was finally eyeing her again in a more than friendly way, there was a sharp rap on the door to their compartment. Without waiting for a response, a blond-haired boy stuck his head in. Tracey instantly recognized him to be Draco Malfoy, even though he had never said so much as four words to her, three of which were unkind.

"Nott," he said, sliding the door open. He took a moment to survey the others in the compartment. His eyes merely glossed over Tracey and Millicent in the corners, then returned over the seventh-year and back to Nott. The only Worthy in the room.

"Malfoy," Theodore said. He had stiffened considerably, and his drink rested loosely in his hand, still half full. Their words to each other were nearly always cool and measured – and carefully friendly. "What are you doing here?"

"Making the rounds." The seventh-year moved over on the bench so Malfoy could sit across from Theodore.

Theodore's eyes drifted to Malfoy's robe. "You're not prefect this year?"

He glanced down quickly and picked at the spot where the pin had been all year long the year before. "Not this year, no. I have much better things to do with my time than babying Firsties."

"Better things?"

Malfoy didn't respond, but glanced around the compartment again. His eyes narrowed when he reached Tracey. "What the hell are you doing here, Davis?"

Tracey sat up, eyes widened. Millicent across from her sank back into the seat. "I–"

"I told her to come, Draco."

Draco's gaze snapped back to Theodore, who was staring back at him coolly and unblinking. "_Told_ her to come?"

Theodore said, "I don't think this is why you stopped by to talk, Draco."

But Malfoy didn't hear him. "Fraternizing with half-bloods, Theodore? I would have expected much better from you. What would your father say if he knew?"

Tracey worried that he would throw his bottle at Malfoy's head, and that he would spill the rest of the potion she had worked so hard to make. She could smell a fight coming and made herself as inconspicuous as possible.

Theodore stood very slowly, his bottle gripped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white and his pale blue veins stood out beneath his thinly stretched skin. "My father doesn't know, and he doesn't ever need to know. He will never find out. Are we understood?"

Malfoy had his back pressed up against the seat, his arms crossed defiantly. But he was smiling, a pleased sort of smirk that made Tracey's insides turn. At least he seemed appeased for now. He wouldn't tell, so long as he knew that Theodore was ashamed of what he was doing. Shame is much more powerful than lies.

Theodore sat down with a heavy thump. He drank what was left of his pumpkin juice, leaning back and closing his eyes. His mood seemed to improve after finishing his drink, because he turned his head and stared at Tracey for a good minute or two. Out of the corner of her eye, Tracey could see Draco staring at them in disgust; but she didn't dare brave his stare head on.

At a jerk of the train, Theodore sat up again and said, "Listen, Draco." Malfoy stared at him with a guarded frown. "I don't give a flying fuck what your opinion is on my love life. If it bothers you then you can just go run back to your mistress Pansy and piss and moan about it until you feel better. But don't take your discontent with your own life out on me."

The guard went down, and for a moment, Tracey saw pure hatred in Malfoy's eyes. But he stood suddenly and stalked out of the compartment and down the hall.

They were all silent. The seventh-year broke the silence. "Damn, Theodore. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen you do. He's going to have it out for you this year; your life's going to be a living hell."

But he just shrugged. He was staring at Tracey again, smiling. "Let him have his fun complaining about me. Sure, he'll spread rumors; sure, he'll be an ass. But he's too much of a coward to really fight me, to say anything really bad to my face. Everything will be over in a few weeks, and then we'll be back to usual."

And with that he spread out on the bench and laid his head in Tracey's lap. He smiled up at her, before curling up and falling asleep. Tracey stared down at him in surprise, but it was nothing compared to the faces of the other two Slytherins. She hesitantly smoothed down his hair to avoid their stares; he didn't move.

"Have you two…" Millicent trailed off, staring at the back of Theodore's head. "Have you two been seeing each other long?"

Tracey shook her head. She would never tell her – she would never tell anyone – how they had really met. She had seen him at Hogwarts before, of course, but he had never been as accessible as he had been that summer. Then again, she had worked hard to make him so accessible – convincing her parents to let her "stay at a friend's house" in Bristol, paying for the cheapest flat she could find, casually running into him at a café she had seen him in before, finding all the ingredients to the potion...

She worried, now that they were returning to Hogwarts, that someone would ask him why he had fallen in love with her in the first place, when, where? She knew for a fact that he wouldn't be able to answer, or his answer would only make people suspicious. Nothing good could come from that.

But looking down at him, so completely relaxed, his mouth curled into a slight smile, she couldn't worry. That could wait until they reached Hogwarts.

The compartment was quiet after Malfoy left and after Theodore fell asleep. The still-unknown seventh-year left without saying good-bye, and Millicent pulled a book out of her bag and read. Tracey watched the damp green and rolling landscape as it raced by her window and eventually fell asleep to the rocking of the train.

Millicent woke her up again when she lost hold of her trunk. "Shit!" It fell and hit the seat next to Tracey hard; the latch opened and spilled the contents on the floor. Millicent scooped her clothes and books together and quickly stuffed them back into the trunk.

Theodore woke up with a jolt and sat up quickly. Millicent hunched over further and kept her head to the floor. Tracey could see that her ears were pink.

Theodore rubbed his left ankle which had been hit by the falling trunk. "Damn it, Bulstrode."

She didn't say anything, just locked her trunk again. She already had her robes on. "You should get dressed," she said, addressing the floor. "We're almost there."

Theodore leaned over Tracey's lap to look out the window. It was nearly dark outside, but they could see Hogwarts silhouetted against the still-lit western sky. Light shone out of hundreds of tiny windows. "Looks like they're expecting us," Theodore said.

He helped her take her trunk down from the overhead rack, and they both changed into their school robes. It was a little awkward changing into the uniform with Theodore in the room. Luckily, she had enough foresight to wear the standard white shirt, so she just had to quickly slip out of her jeans and into her skirt. The robes helped a little, giving her something like curtains to change behind. Her back was covered, but in the window ahead of her, she could see Theodore openly staring at her reflection.

They were all standing and waiting at the door when the Hogwarts Express finally came to a halt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters – they're all property of J.K. Rowling. Anything you don't recognize probably belongs to me, unless stated otherwise. The only thing I can take credit for is maybe the plot.

**Author's Note**: Chapter two, here, and not much to say about it. Read and enjoy.

**Chapter Two**

Beneath the table in the Great Hall, Theodore gripped Tracey's hand. Once or twice before, while they watched the first-years being Sorted, his hand had – of its own accord, he said – run up her thigh. Now he was watching the short newcomers scurrying to their new homes for seven years, being congratulated by their new family. He cheered, albeit half-heartedly, whenever one was sorted into Slytherin.

Tracey had a hard time concentrating on Dumbledore's annual Beginning-of-the-Year speech – not that she ever really tried to listen – because all throughout, Theodore rubbed his leg against hers and tried to untangle his hand from hers to place it in very inappropriate places. She started to wonder if she had given him too much potion after all. She felt the weight of hundreds of eyes on her, and not only Slytherin eyes, but Hufflepuff eyes, Ravenclaw eyes, Gryffindor eyes.

Finally, Dumbledore sat down, and their dinner distracted Theodore long enough that people stopped staring at them.

A short distance down the table, she glanced over and saw Malfoy and Pansy snogging rather passionately – but they weren't getting nearly as many stares, not nearly as much hostility. Unless one counted all the girls that envied Pansy and wished upon every star in the sky that they would one morning wake up in her place. Tracey envied her, too, but not because of whose arm – whose _face_ – she was on. Pansy didn't have anything to be ashamed of: she wasn't a half-blood.

His plate clean and stomach full, Theodore wrapped an arm around her waist and took up where he had left off.

Tracey pushed him away long enough to say, "Hey, why don't we go to the common room."

He smiled lazily at her. "Sounds like a good idea to me."

He practically pulled her down the hall, down the stairs, to the entrance to the Slytherin common room. The password rolled out of his lips in an excited burst, and a stone door appeared out of the solid wall and swung aside for them.

He led her inside and was about to take the stairs up to the boys' dormitories, Tracey's hand still in his grip, when Tracey dug in her heels. "Theo." She had to hold on to the doorframe, and even then he didn't stop right away. He was a few steps above her; he looked down over his shoulder. "Theo," she said carefully, "it's been a really long day. I'm pretty tired right now."

He stared. "When has that ever stopped you before?"

She twisted her hand out of his grip and retreated a few steps. "Not tonight, all right?"

Theodore was completely still, searching her face. He took a few steps down until her head was at his chest level. "If you want." But he didn't sound very gracious, just like a child that hadn't gotten his way. He kissed her and then took the stairs up two at a time.

Tracey sat in an arm chair in front of the crackling fire, thinking, until she heard the raucous laughter of a crowd of Slytherins filing through the entry. Some settled into the various arm chairs and couches that scattered the room; others headed directly up to their beds.

She was watching the timid first years sneaking up the stairs and huddling together in tight groups, when her chair tipped up suddenly, sending her sprawling on the floor. She flipped around angrily, expecting to see some clumsy underclassman that she could proceed to disembowel.

The anger went out of her eyes immediately, taking with it most of the color in her face.

Draco Malfoy let the chair legs crash back down onto the stone floors, and the sharp cracking sound punctuated many of the conversations around the room, a definitive exclamation point. He grinned nastily at her. "This is _my_ chair, half-blood." Pansy and her gang stood behind him, snickering; Crabbe and Goyle stood to his left.

He sat with one leg dangling over the armrest. The hem of his long, black cloak brushed Tracey's splayed fingers. She stood with as much dignity as she could muster. In her mind's eye, she could see herself standing up to him, telling him off, punching him in the face.

But in the end, she settled for the more realistic solution: she hurried off like some boot-licking, cowardly first-year. Their sharp laughter haunted her all the way up to her dorm room.

With the door closed firmly behind her, the laughing stopped, although it replayed over and over in her mind. She flung herself face first on her bed, the one closest to the door, and buried her face in a pillow. Her palms and knees hurt where she landed so suddenly; resting like they were, they soon began to throb painfully.

Not a good way to start off a new year.

What seemed to Tracey like a few seconds later, she was jolted out of her sleep by "Half-blood, wake up!" Tracey pushed herself up on her forearms to look around and saw Pansy and Daphne collapsed on Pansy's bed, laughing.

"I can't believe that she actually responded to that!"

"Shit, I know! At least it shows that she knows her place."

They calmed down slowly, laying on their backs and suffering every now and then from a resurgence giggles. Tracey lay back down with her face in her pillow and started to fall asleep again.

But they wouldn't have it.

The springs in her bed groaned as both Pansy and Daphne jumped on, on either side of her. They lay on their stomachs, too, and tried to get a look at her face from below. Pansy took her shoulder and shook it roughly.

Tracey turned her head on her pillow so she could see Pansy through a half-open eye. "What?" She wasn't in any mood to play the Nice Game with Pansy.

Evidently Pansy wasn't in the mood either. "What the hell are you doing to Theodore?"

"What do you mean? What were you doing to Draco at–"

"_That's_ not what I mean." She wasn't smiling, and her wide eyes were narrowed dangerously. Up so close, Tracey could see the fading amused flush on Pansy's cheeks. She had the delicate facial structure of one whose family hadn't had to work for generations. Tracey buried her face in her pillow, not sure if she was trying to hide her lumpy face from Pansy's icy glare or trying to suffocate herself. In any case, she was having trouble breathing.

She dared a peek to the side, but Pansy hadn't gone away. She hadn't even stopped staring. Daphne on her other side was practically breathing down her neck. Millicent stumbled in through the door, tripping over someone's pair of discarded shoes. But even Millicent sprawled in a heap on the floor wasn't enough to take the attention off of Tracey.

Finally, the pair of Evil Eyes that had burned a sizable hole in the back of her head grew to be too much. Tracey pushed herself up without a word and backed off her bed. She shuffled stiffly around to her trunk and started rifling through the clothes inside. She pulled out an old-fashioned nightgown, with a lacey collar and the hem brushing down to the floor, a style probably popular in the early nineteenth century. She dared a glance over her shoulder.

Pansy and Daphne's heads had swiveled to follow her, and they were still giving her very Evil Eyes. Almost out of the range of her vision, Tracey saw Millicent standing and staring at her, her mouth agape, with a look of horror on her face. She shook her head, as if to say, _Merlin, Tracey, what have you done? They'll devour you and then they'll eat me for dessert!_

Tracey slipped out of her uniform, a bit self-consciously with three pairs of eyes at her back, and tugged on her nightgown. While she was carefully – much more carefully than usual – folding her uniform and putting it in her trunk, she said, "Why does it matter to you what I'm doing with Theodore?"

"Not _with_, _to_; what are you doing _to_ him?"

"I'm not doing anything _to_ him," she said calmly, trying to keep the vial of pearly liquid out of sight and out of mind. She would give herself away if she started dwelling on it. "He likes me, that's all."

Daphne said, "Oh, don't be a ninny, Tracey. We're talking about _Theodore_. Theodore _Nott_. Theodore Nott whose family is very _rich_ and _respected_." Tracey pretended to be absorbed in tidying up her trunk. She put all her books on one side and all her clothes on the other. "And you have nothing to speak of, except dirty blood. You live around Muggles, don't you?"

Tracey imagined what Daphne's face would look like with a big, bloody crater where her pointy nose used to be.

Pansy slid off the side of the bed and walked around to lean on the end, close to where Tracey was kneeling. If she wanted to, she could have kneed Tracey in the face without much strenuous movement. Tracey looked up at her, growing more and more aware by the minute that she had maybe stepped too far over the line. The part of her mind that was realizing this was obviously a bit slower than her mouth. "Why do you care so much, anyway, what Theo does and who he does it with? You both have boyfriends, after all, so it's not like I'm competition or anything." She felt like kicking herself; it would save Pansy the trouble.

"_We're_ not dating above our station. We have blood purity to worry about."

She slammed the lid of her trunk. "You still haven't answered my question. This–" Here she gestured elaborately to herself and then in the general direction of where she assumed Theodore was at the moment "–doesn't concern you at all! It couldn't concern you less! If Theodore and I want to have lots of dirty-blooded babies, that's our business." They stared at her with Evil, Hateful Eyes. "_Merlin_, just leave me alone." She threw herself onto her bed and crawled to her pillow, almost elbowing Daphne in the eye.

They stood at the foot of her bed, silently accusing. Tracey sat up and, in a sharp movement, pulled shut the drapes on all three sides of her four-poster bed. She could see their outlines through the velvety fabric. Digging the heels of her palms into her eyes, she made a strangled, defeated noise.

Pansy took this as her cue and peeked in one of the sides. "It's just that–" Tracey groaned loudly "–it's a bit strange how much he's changed, isn't it? I mean, before, at the end of last year, I remember him making fun of you with the rest of us. He never even spoke to you, except for class or 'Davis, pass the butter and jam.' He treated you like the rest of us, and now he won't leave you alone. He's gone mad."

Muffled slightly by her hands still covering her face, Tracey said, "He's not mad. People change, don't they?"

Daphne draws aside the curtain on the other side of the bedpost. "Not that much. People don't go from hatred to love, other than in bad romance novels. Blaise and I were friends before we started dating. So were Draco and Pansy. All of us, _friends_."

"Then Theodore and I are anomalies. Can you just let it go for tonight? You'll have plenty of time over the next ten months to make fun of me. Don't want to tire yourself out so early on; what would you do the rest of the year?" She had a hard time keeping the bitterness out of her voice. _Oh, such cheek_. She would pay for it over the next few weeks, but right now she was tired and cranky and didn't really care that Pansy's face was screwing up in that way that it does when she's overeaten or angry, or that Daphne's face was turning a shade of lavender. To show them that she was serious, she grabbed her pillow and forced it down over her face and then relaxed.

Sounds under the downy pillow were muffled, but she heard Pansy and Daphne eventually shuffle off to bed.

Definitely not a good way to start a new year, Tracey decided.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters – they're all property of J.K. Rowling. Anything you don't recognize probably belongs to me, unless stated otherwise. The only thing I can take credit for is maybe the plot.

**Author's Note**: This is a little shorter than the last chapters – sorry about that. Sometimes you just have to stop when you find a good stopping place.  
Thank you very much for the one review. (:

**Chapter Three**

It would be a good year for Draco Malfoy. He was nearing the pinnacle of the Hogwarts hierarchy, and even though he was only a sixth-year, he already had control over most of the Slytherin house and the rest of Hogwarts using fear and his family name alone.

It was a good life.

He sloped easily through the halls, heading in the general direction of the dungeons. Bright autumn sunlight angled through the tall windows, interrupting the dank cool of the hallway. Draco only snapped at one group of bumbling underclassmen, who quickly ran – literally ran – away from him in the opposite direction.

Nothing could spoil his mood on a day as good as this. He always complained about Hogwarts, but somewhere in a hidden corner inside himself, he secretly enjoyed it. During the summer, while he spent his days in the spacious and cold Malfoy manor, he thirsted for the press of students in the halls, for the clumsily tripped feet and swirling cloaks.

The air in the dungeons was cooler and wetter, and there were puddles everywhere from mysterious leaks in the walls and ceiling. Draco turned a corner and stopped. There were two dark figures down the hall, pressed against the wall. He approached them slowly, searching for the best and most unpleasant way to interrupt them.

The taller figure moved and Draco stopped again. The dim torchlight revealed a sandy brown head and a ropey neck and staring eyes – it was Nott.

And – shit.

Tracey Davis struggled into view and froze like a green first-year when she saw him.

Draco just stood staring at them. No witty insults, no snide remarks, no blistering taunts, just a silent stare. His brains seemed to have stopped working. Slowly, he became aware that he wasn't staring at Nott, but at Dumpy Davis and her open-mouthed Gape of Horror. She shrank away from his cold eyes, but Nott pulled her close, whispered something in her ear – it sounded like '_save yourself!_' – and pushed her gently off on her way. She skirted along the far wall to avoid Draco, and he followed her with his glare until she was out of sight and around the corner.

"Come, come, Draco," Nott said in a voice distinctly un-Nott-like. "Stop giving me that look. I know what that look means."

"I'm not getting anywhere near you, Mudblood-lover," he snapped. To prove that he meant what he said, he started walking briskly along the other side of the hallway.

Nott seemed unperturbed and caught up easily with Draco, settling into his gait with his long legs. Draco almost ran into a statue, he was so intent on avoiding him.

"Get it right. She's not a Mudblood: she's a half-blood."

"Oh, and that's so much better."

Nott sniffed. "Her father is a pure-blood. High-class, too."

They were nearing the Potions classroom. Draco hissed, "But her mother's a bloody Muggle, and that pollutes everything. You know that, Nott." Nott just shrugged.

There were only a few people waiting so early. Blaise and Daphne were engaged in similar activities as Nott had been moments before, but this time Draco said nothing. There was nothing to say. At least one of his friends – classmates – wasn't crazy.

They four Slytherins claimed a table up front when Professor Slughorn arrived. He was – admittedly – more than a little disappointed that Professor Snape was no longer the Potions master, but Draco was also strangely eager to prove that he could succeed without preferential treatment.

He hardly noticed that Potter walked in.

The first hour of class dragged by. Everything was terribly boring and _ho-hum_ until they got to the cauldrons sitting in the front of the classroom. Veritaserum, seated in front of his table. Polyjuice potion, Felix Felicis, both useful. But he paid extra-special attention to the pearly white potion on the other side of the room.

Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world. What whiffs he got of it, it smelled to Draco like new robes, the dungeons, and something metallic. He glanced over at Nott, who seemed to be regaining some of his former sharpness and bitterness the longer he was away from that half-blood Davis. A strange look passed over his face when the curling smoke drifted across the room to him.

Draco still couldn't understand Theodore's infatuation with the girl.

_Infatuation. More like obsession._

And then something Slughorn said sparked his interest. "Amortentia doesn't really create _love_, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and most powerful potion in this room."

Draco's smirk fell quickly. _Infatuation. Obsession_. He glanced at Nott again, who hadn't seemed to notice anything, who was still smirking at Slughorn, and who didn't realize just how well Slughorn had described his love for Davis.

He didn't win the Felix Felicis – Potter did, that pompous little prick – but as he walked out of Potions, he felt that maybe the fumes of it had given him a little luck after all. If there was something he loved more than being lucky, it was having in his possession sensitive information he could use to mercilessly blackmail someone.

He smiled secretly as he waited for Nott in the hallway. He murmured quietly to himself, "You're dead, Tracey Davis. Dead."

This was something that Draco understood. He watched Davis very carefully over the next week, a predator just waiting for its prey to misstep.

He felt better about Nott, knowing that he was actually doing something about the situation. He didn't feel nearly as helpless when he had another person's life in his hands – even if the other person didn't know it yet. Draco made sure that he was always sitting across from Davis. By the end of the week, she was visibly shaken by his constant presence. Just what he wanted.

His persistence was rewarded on the first Saturday after they returned to school. He had let his guard down – seemingly, but he was really watching her every movement out of the corner of his eye. Theodore turned to a neighbour, chatting animatedly and leaving his drink unattended.

The thing that caught his eye was how furtively Davis looked around at everyone sitting around her. She looked like she was trying to be casual, nonchalant, but he could see her eyes darting around like a frightened pig.

He shifted himself ever so slightly, so that he could watch her without really watching her.

Draco had almost given up, when he saw Davis reach slowly, carefully into her robes. Her hands closed around something, and she hid it under the table. With one last panicked glance around to make sure no one was watching, she leaned over and casually grabbed Theodore's goblet, pretending to take a drink out of it.

But Draco wasn't fooled. He saw the quick flash of glass, the practised quick hands pouring a few drops of a liquid – _a pearly white liquid_ – into Theodore's cup. She replaced the goblet next to Theodore's arm and slowly replaced the stopper in the top of the glass vial. When she stuffed the potion back into a pocket in her robe, she lifted her head to survey the people around her, just to double-check.

Her eyes met Draco's, and she looked defiant. _Little munter, thinking that just because Theodore can stand her, she can pretend away her blood._

He smiled a very slow, dangerous smile. His eyelids drooped slowly until they were half-open, his eyebrows lowered, his face angled slightly up, and his lips drew out in a cold, smug line.

Davis' smugness fell from her face. He could almost hear it shatter on the ground. Her eyes widened, and she couldn't seem to force her gaze from his smile.

Just to be sure that she realised the trouble she was in, he let his eyes drift lazily to Nott's goblet, then back to her face. His grin widened as her face fell and as the colour drained completely from her cheeks and lips. She looked a pale white ghost, a little green about the edges.

Theodore looked over to Davis, and his eyebrows rose in concern. He bent over her and said things to her that Draco couldn't hear, but she hardly seemed to notice him. She was still staring at Draco like he had just ripped off a mask to show her the snake head beneath. Nott looked over to him, and Draco grinned at him, not at all threateningly, shrugged his shoulder, and turned back to Pansy, who was beginning to notice that his attention wasn't focused on her.

_Squirm, Davis._

**Citations**: The excerpt from Slughorn's lecture on Amortentia is borrowed from _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ from page 186 of the American hardback version. It's not mine – don't sue me please!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters – they're all property of J.K. Rowling. Anything you don't recognize probably belongs to me, unless stated otherwise. The only thing I can take credit for is maybe the plot.

**Author's Note**: At long last, an update! I'm sorry for the few of you out there who actually seem to be reading this, but I must admit that it's sort of discouraging when no one seems to be reading your story, if only because I think of all the things that I could be doing that might earn me money – like writing my own book! But for a while now, I've been thinking of starting this up again, and I found that I had already written out this chapter, so I thought I'd post it. Updates might not be all that frequent, but we'll see. I just love writing Draco. (:

**Chapter Four**

Tracey became very familiar with all the different forms of panic over the next few days. There was the kind that made her heart literally stop for a few seconds, the kind that made her skin get all cold and sweaty, the kind that made her feel as if she would throw up, and the kind that did all three at the same time.

She did her best to avoid Malfoy, which was hard since they were in the same year, in the same House, with some of the same classes, and with the same group of friends. Needless to say she spent a lot of time getting friendly with the library and unused classrooms.

But he said nothing. He didn't speak to her more than usual – which was practically never, and never more than three words at a time – and no more people than usual taunted her. Theodore remained just as blissfully ignorant as ever of just how horrible a person she was.

She was more careful after that about when and where and how she gave Theodore his weekly dosage of Amortentia. Two weeks later, after two more successful dosings and no more mishaps, she even convinced herself that Malfoy knew nothing at all, and that that night he was just being Malfoy. All raised eyebrows and significant glances with no actual meaning.

October third, she ran out of Amortentia completely. This had not been a day she was looking forward to.

She lay curled next to a sprawled out Theodore on a couch in the common room. It was raining outside, and Theodore had dragged the great hulking couch in front of the fireplace, evicting a few underclassmen in the process. Now his book he was reading for Potions lay tented over her shoulder, and he had his eyes closed contentedly.

Tracey carefully crawled out from the tangle of his sleep-heavy arms and the heavy book. He didn't wake up. The common room was unusually quiet today, probably owing to the fact that everyone was too sleepy and subdued from the dark weather to get into fights.

She padded shoeless up the stairs to her bed and pulled out a cold, lumpy bag from her trunk. Obviously she couldn't brew the potion in the middle of the dormitory; she had discovered a few days previously a nice, quiet, never-used tower that would serve her purposes just fine.

In the quick moment before she ducked out of the common room into a dark hall, she saw Theodore still asleep on the couch.

It was a bother getting to the tower, even though this time she didn't have to carry up a cauldron with her. The walls were much to close and even though Tracey had never known herself to be claustrophobic, she felt it desperately in this pitch-black stairwell.

Finally she pushed open the thick wooden door at the top of the stairs. It creaked inward noisily. The thick rain spattered on the edges of the tower not protected by thick stone wall. The cauldron rested where she had placed it earlier that week, pushed against the wall.

It was automatic by now, brewing Amortentia. She pulled the cauldron a little bit away from the wall, so there was enough space for her to sit with her back against the stone, and lit a fire beneath it. The last ingredient to go in, once the potion was a thick grayish color, was the Ashwinder eggs. They were still frozen and cold to the touch. Tracey let them roll off her hand with three satisfying _plop_s. She stirred the liquid in a vigorous clockwise motion; it quickly started boiling violently, large pearlescent bubbles popping too close to her hand.

The door creaked next to her; a gust of wind blew through the thin window slots above and around her, whistling low. A particularly sharp gust from the direction of the small balcony threatened to blow out the fire.

"Oh-ho."

Tracey's hand froze. She hadn't said that, had she? It was too deep, and she couldn't remember talking out loud to herself. Maybe it escaped of its own accord – she _hoped_ it had escaped of its own accord.

It was silent again, and Tracey had convinced herself that she was hearing things, until she glanced quickly over to the door and saw the shining black shoes right next to her. She looked up very slowly, mind numb and focusing defiantly on the high-quality woven fabric the pants were made of and the expensive dyes that gave it a grayish-greenish tinge while still appearing mostly grey. The cloak was nice, too, and the shirt and vest, and _Merlin_, the tie with its glinting silver tie clip with a delicate S on a green and silver shield. It was hard to force her eyes up to the face.

Malfoy looked so smug she though his face would break in two from smugness. His mouth was drawn wide and thin so that his lips were almost colorless, but there was no mirth in his eyes – just a vacant, black triumph.

_It's time to do what you do best, Tracey_, she thought miserably. _Grovel._

Malfoy took a few large steps around her cauldron and picked up the lumpy bag at her side. He pulled an egg out of the bag, rolled it in his hand, threw it up a few times into the air. Tracey thought about warning him that if the egg got warm it would spontaneously combust in ball of fire and probably consume most of the Slytherin House before it could be stopped, but then she realized that that would be a great relief, being burned alive.

He put the egg back into the bag. "Ashwinder eggs, huh?" he said, his voice echoing oddly in the small tower. "Aren't these really expensive? Or rare? I've certainly never run across these in the middle of the road. Are you sure you can afford these, Davis?"

She stared at him until he met her gaze.

"You're wondering what I'm doing up here, aren't you?"

_No, I'm wondering whether it would be more honorable to fling myself off this tower or to push you off instead._

Luckily, Malfoy couldn't read minds. Ignoring her silence, he continued, "I saw you sneaking out all alone, so _carefully_, and I thought to myself, 'What's Dumpy Davis doing all by herself? Maybe it would be best that I follow her and make sure she doesn't hurt herself.' And I'm terribly glad," he said, grinning, "that I did follow you after all."

"You know" was all Tracey could croak out. Her brain seemed to be on holiday.

"Know what?" He was still smiling, mockingly innocent. "Know, perhaps, that this is where you escape to when you realize just how inadequate you are? Know that you are being a complete arse? Know that, not only are you breaking about twenty school rules, but that you're also threatening the honor of a family?" He didn't need to say any more.

Tracey crumpled a little to the side, potion forgotten. She had to grovel now, and she was preparing herself for it. She had known that she would have to if anyone ever found out exactly why, and the fact that the person that found out was Draco Malfoy meant that she would have to be especially servile. "What do I have to do?" she asked quietly, more to a ball of lint on her vest than up to Malfoy's pale face.

"I can't hear you."

"What do I have to do, to – to ensure that this stays between us?"

"Oh, Davis, Davis, Davis," he said, shaking his head with that grin still on his face. "That would be telling. It will be all the more excruciating if you don't know what to expect, if you don't know when to expect it, don't you agree?" He bent down to her level and she noted absently that his knees cracked loudly. "Don't you just love surprises?"


End file.
